He recently moved the company into a 12,000-square-foot building at 1800 E. 121st St. in Burnsville. His firm was housed in ShopJimmy’s Burnsville space through March, he said.

Not that there was much to house. Ness said he essentially started his old business from scratch with his own money in January with no employees, no sales and no inventory. He’s now back in operation with 10 employees distributing the same products he did before: accessories for consumer electronics such as cables, connectors, TV wall mounts plus parts such as capacitors, transistors and the like.

Jimmy Vosika, founder and director of partology at ShopJimmy.com, said the merger didn’t turn out to be a good fit, especially since ShopJimmy was particularly busy last year moving to new, 300,000-square-foot space. “That was a big part of the issue of why things didn’t work out,” Vosika said. “It just made sense for both of us to separate, go on our own paths and grow on our own. It was a mutual thing.”

Both companies sell parts to the consumer-electronics repair industry. ShopJimmy takes apart old or broken TVs returned to stores and sells the parts. Vosika said he’s slowed the company’s growth and is focusing on profitability; he predicts ShopJimmy will have about $18 million in sales this year with a better margin than last year. ShopJimmy was the 11th ranked company on the Business Journal's 2012 Fast 50 list of the fastest-growing private companies in the Twin Cities.

Ness Electronics sells its products mostly to independent consumer-electronics retail and service shops, such as Plaza TV in South St. Paul, though there are more stores like that in rural areas where access is limited to big retailers like Walmart and Best Buy. His company also sells a lot of over-the-air TV antennas for people who are “cutting the cord” to cable and satelite TV services, Ness said.

Ness Electronics was founded in 1964 by Don Ness, but owned and operated by Mike Ness before it was sold to ShopJimmy. At that time, the company had 30 employees and operations in Des Moines, Iowa, and Milwaukee.

To restart the company, Mike Ness said he invested a lot of his own money, including the warehouse purchase. “I am growing the business back to what it was,” he said.